Poetry Definitions Flashcards

Poetry Overview

• Poetry fuses precise word meanings with emotional resonance and musical qualities, including rhythm and sound.

Types of Poems

• Lyric: Short poems expressing thoughts and feelings of a single speaker.
• Narrative: Poems that tell a story, often with a structured plot.
• Dramatic: Poetry that presents dialogue of one or more speakers within a dramatic situation.

Poetic Structure

• Speaker: The voice in a poem that conveys the narrative, similar to a story's narrator, often an imagined character.
• Lines and Stanzas: Poetry is organized into lines and stanzas, which are groupings of lines; stanzas named by their line count.

Rhythm and Meter

• Rhythm: Created by natural patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables in language.
• Meter: Specific rhythm patterns formed by the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables.
• Feet: Basic units of rhythm formed by combinations of stressed and unstressed syllables.

Types of Feet

• Iamb: An unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
• Trochee: A stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable.
• Spondee: Two consecutive stressed syllables.
• Dactyl: A stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.
• Anapest: Two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable.

Rhyme and Sound Devices

• Rhyme: A sound device in poetry; not all poems rhyme.
• Sound Devices: Techniques that produce musical effects, enhancing the auditory experience.
• Exact Rhyme: Words ending with the same vowel and consonant sounds (e.g., sun and run).
• Slant Rhyme: Similar but not identical ending sounds (e.g., prove and love).
• End Rhyme: Rhymes at the end of lines (e.g., crawls, walls, falls).
• Internal Rhyme: Rhymes within a line (e.g., mouse in the house).
• Rhyme Scheme: A formalized structure of rhymes, indicated by alphabet letters.

Other Sound Devices

• Repetition: Reuse of language elements for emphasis or effect.
• Assonance: Repetition of vowel sounds in stressed syllables.
• Consonance: Repetition of final consonant sounds in stressed syllables.
• Onomatopoeia: Words that imitate natural sounds.

Language in Poetry

• Denotation: The literal or dictionary meaning of words.
• Connotation: The emotional or cultural associations linked to words.
• Tone: The poet's emotional attitude toward the subject matter.

Imagery and Figurative Language

• Imagery: Descriptive language that creates vivid mental pictures.
• Figurative Language: Uses comparisons and symbolic meanings rather than literal interpretation.
• Simile: A comparison between two things using "like" or "as".
• Metaphor: A direct comparison between two unrelated things.
• Personification: Giving human traits or abilities to nonhuman objects or concepts.

Types of Poetry Forms

• Free Verse: Poetry that forgoes fixed patterns but retains poetic language.
• Formal Verse: Adheres to specific patterns regarding rhyme and meter.
• Ballad: Narrative poems with song-like qualities, typically featuring repetition and structured meter.
• Haiku: A traditional Japanese form consisting of three lines with a 5-7-5 syllable structure.